June 16th
byWelcome back, readers, and happy Father’s Day to y’all who celebrate it. E3 has come and gone, and readers and especially writers are no doubt in recovery mode after the annual avalanche of coverage on all The New Games. While many of…
sociality
How do people involved in interactive media interact with each other? What kind of social structures are we designing when we design games? This is a topic of interest to sociologists, community managers, and anyone with a stake in multiplayer gaming.
June 2nd
byWelcome back, readers, and happy Pride Month! Many of this week’s selections can be related back to the notion of inclusivity in some way. The decisions you make as a designer to include (or not include) accessibility and/or difficulty options affects who…
May 5th
byHello readers! This week’s labour abuse spotlight is on NetherRealm, and the story runs pretty much the whole way through the studio’s history. I hate that my touching on this is practically a weekly feature in its own right at this point,…
April 28th
byWelcome back, readers. So, when I expressed the hope last week that there would be provocative critical takes on the new Mortal Kombat game released this week, I didn’t mean this. But why should I expect the Internet to have anything other…
April 21st
byWelcome, readers. There’s a lot of looking back in critical games writing this week, which makes sense to me, since for many it’s a holiday weekend and we are in kind of a lull period between GDC and E3. Big releases have…
March 24th
byHappy Sunday, readers! First of all, if you haven’t already seen it, we’ve got a new Critical Compilation this week–this time on the Mass Effect Trilogy, courtesy of Emma Kostopolus. She’s gathered a bunch of great writing on how the series intersects…
March 17th
byHey there. This was a pretty devastating week. The terrorist attack in Christchurch has sparked some long-overdue conversations about the extent to which white supremacist ideology is coddled at almost every level of western media and culture. This time around, games–and gaming…
March 10th
byHappy Sunday, readers! So last week I used this space to essentially subtweet a major publisher that did something really stupid and toxic in a cynical attempt to grab headlines. Is it possible to do the same thing to the largest distributor…
March 3rd
byHappy Sunday, readers. Things happened this week in games. Some really, icky, bad things. Typically I leave some space at the top here to reflect on some of these things and maybe connect them to the week’s selection of writing, but if…
February 24th
byHappy Sunday readers. You’ll be very glad to know that I have braved an incalculable deluge of posts, tweets, and articles reeling at the name of Nintendo of America’s new president to bring you some quality stuff to read this week. Before…